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Monday, November 29, 2010

Monday, November 29, 2010

Did you hear that San Francisco recently passed a law saying McDonald's can't give out toys in their Happy Meals? Yep. Apparently they don't think we should entice children to eat food that is bad for them by offering little toys as rewards.

And really, they have an excellent point: you *shouldn't* reward kids for eating junk with little toys.

You should reward kids for eating junk with really, really BIG toys!!

BWAH-HA-HAAA!!!

Ahem.

No, seriously, let's consider the slippery slope here, shall we? First you start with an innocent pair of sunglasses:

Or, as the label calls them, a "tiara."

Next you up the ante with two or three action figures...

...or nine or ten.

Then you start adding custom carrying cases for the action figures...

And big dollhouses for them to live in...

Until finally, the toy is so large, so complex, that it's impossible to tell where the Happy Meal ends and the toy begins!

Someone needs to enforce a plastic to cake ratio on these Wreckerators. Cakes should not be more the 50% plastic and still be allowed to be called "cake". Though if I had my way no plastic would ever touch cake, except a plastic fork. :P

Okay, on the last one, it looks like a white brick of a cake with the plastic stuck in front and all around???Oh, and who puts a fuzzy stuffed animal next to icing? I don't care if there is a little plastic tray. Yuk!

The second to last cake reminds me of cakes when I was a kid in the Philippines. I still see some like that on display at a Filipino bakery in San Diego, so I assume that means they can still make them that way.

Keep the toys, lose the horribly unhealthy food. At least the toys cause children to play. (The current Hello Kitty watches could even be educational- my 3-year-old can't tell time yet, but keeps trying to on her Happy meal watch.)My daughter wants the Strawberry Shortcake cake!

The best part of the cake with the insane number of cartoon character action figures...the background of the pic would indicate the theme for the party was "Cars." They couldn't find just ONE Lightening McQueen to shove on the cake?

Although if a cake decorator is going to use a toy, they should at least make sure it's a full toy. I've heard horror stories about people using those Wilton "teen doll picks" and the little girl, enthralled by her princess cake, reaches for the barbie in the middle and then OH MY GOD WAAAHHHHH WHAT HAPPENED TO BARBIE'S LEGS WAHHHHHHHHH!

Some day I'm going to use the one that came with my Wilton pan to make a car accident cake with anatomically correct gumpaste entrails. Muahahahahaha.

Do I get my license to read here revoked if I admit that I actually bought that last one? The front is just a very thin sheet of plastic stuck onto the cake, My 5-year-old asked for that cake every time we passed it at the grocery store for a YEAR before her birthday (yes, she really does plan that far ahead). Also, that kit is no longer available from the store where I bought it; it has moved over to a different grocery chain.

Why not just put the present on the table and wrap the cake? On second thought... "No, don't shake it!"

#1 I like how there is different-color icing in the treads on the 4x. Recycling is green, like that frosting. [urp]

#2 I'd like a slice without so much cat on it.

#4 The problem with a cake this heavily flotsamized: once all the non-edible bits are removed, what remains doesn't look edible, either. "Here's a slice with a few fragments of frosting on it -- doesn't that look appetizing!"

#5 See 4.

#6 "Cat 15 with regular filling." I don't really know what to do with that. Is that a message from the dentist?

#7 Sweet mother of pearl. It's one thing when the flotsam is kind of a stand-alone thing. Okay, maybe not when frosting has to be removed from synthetic (I hope) fur or hair, but when the deconstructed non-cake bits are only useful for decorating another cake...?

If my niece even suspected the castle cake existed, she would demand it. All day, every day. Think I'll email her that picture. Heh heh...

Figures that it would be San Francisco that would pass a law taking the toy out of the happy. More proof that they have no clue. When will people figure out that it isn't the toy that is the problem? The toy isn't what the problem, the problem is the continued growing fast food culture that has replaced Americans making and cooking food for themselves. What we really need is the return of home cooked food and eating out to go back to being a special occasion instead of the rule. It makes good sense too. It will usually cost much less to make your own hamburger then it will to buy a fast food meal.

There is cake in the last one I swear lol! I work at a bakery in Walmart and we do the princess cake, its two tiers of cake then we add lots of plastic crap. The white of the "building" part is the actual cake

Oh, LORD. My sweet little niece, for her last two birthdays has had that EXACT SAME Disney Princess Castle Cake (and yes, the castle IS cake. It's just the turrets and other pink plastic bits makes it look like a toy). The last one tasted vile; it was like they spread Crisco all over the cake.

With no false modesty (and my other sister agreed), I could have made a MUCH better-tasting, nicer-looking one, not to cheaper, given my sister spent $40 on the offense to cakedom.

I kept WAITING for the castle cake, for it's the very one that we made for our GrandDaughter this year. She picked it out of the cake-book, we ordered the "kit" and DD made it. After all the cake has the over-the-top Tammy Faye quality which appeals to the six-year-old market.

I'd thought the turrets pushed down through the cake, but they sorta unroll and set into the corners. And that's a low price for that cake---the kit cost 19.99 plus shipping.

The cake IS in there---enough for twenty and lots left over. The castle is way more than a foot high.

My friend actually works in a bakery and has shown me pictures of that exact same last cake. Yeah the white part is the only cake part and all the rest is plastic that attaches to it. It is pitiful that they can charge $35 for plastic cake.

I'm a mom who actually bought the castle cake from my local grocery for my daughter's 3rd birthday. I bought it because I'm a sucker for my daughter telling me every week for 6 months that that was the cake she wanted. It's a big fat illusion. Seriously. The towers are thin pieces of plastic that simply wrap around the corners and are held in place by the cake and the plastic tower toppers. They're not even full circles or play-worthy. The door and princess topper are thin pieces of plastic. The cake itself is everything you see in white. The plants are just piped on. It's a ton of cake! But when you're done, the only thing left over that's useful are the princesses.

I work in a grocery store bakery and I kind of hate the toy kit cakes. The ones we have aren't nearly as elaborate as the ones you posted, but I can't get over how worked up kids get over these things.

IN MY DAY *rattles walker* the only input I had on my cake was what color roses I wanted to put on it and if I wanted vanilla or chocolate cake.

During my post-holiday travels yesterday, I had to stop for dinner on the road and a Happy Meal was the best/smallest option. It was my first fast food eaten in over a year - I thought "hey, at least I will get a fun toy I can give to someone" only to get some creep-tastic Madame Alexander mini doll of a girl dressed as a wolf (assuming it is a storybook reference?). Maybe now I should save it for a wreck-tastic cake decoration :)

I pine for the good old days when the words "choking hazard" used to mean something. When I was a kid, all we had were lousy frosting roses on picks. They were dry and crunchy! And we were grateful for them, I tell ya!

(And by the way, why does the inscription on the cat cake look like one long HappyBirthday?)

I often think Charm City Cakes has to provide a diagram showing what is cake, what is wood, what is Rice Krispies, etc., just so people can cut some of their cakes. However, these are worse. If you have to get a bucket to hold all the "decorations" before you cut the cake, there are too many. Obviously these people have never heard the saying "less is more".

That last one is just gobsmacking. Now I'm not one to pour shame on those who are baking-challenged. I've been blessed with baking ability so I bake, some haven't so they don't. That's cool. But when you've got more plastic than cake, there's something seriously wrong.

Also, I totally agree with you, Isolder74. The toy isn't the problem, it's the fake food that has somehow become the norm. My family and I went "additive free" almost 4 years ago now (yes, that's no artificial ANYTHING) and I wouldn't go back, not for love nor money. Get back to REAL food and suddenly you'll see how much better you feel. Oh and a friend of mine (who lives in the USA) went "no high fructose corn syrup" and lost 22 lbs in just 3 weeks.But it's the TOYS they ban. Good call. Not.

You know.... I NEVER thought I would wear a tiara! and might I add YUCK! Who wants a cake that sheds? Also... are my eyes fooling me or do i see a McDonalds golden arch on the first one?:O Dun Dun Dunnn!

Well I do understand how some people get into thinking that fast food and frozen dinners are their only options. I live in a basement apartment where I usually don't have good access to the upstairs kitchen most of the time.

That being said I do have ready access to the kitchen in my brother's house. What I have done is take Plastic Food Trays that I've either saved from frozen dinners or gotten from a restaurant supply store, and made my own frozen dinners. Not to long ago, I made my own chicken fried steak dinners using a round roast, potatoes and frozen carrots and managed to make 14 ready to reheat meals at about $10 in total costs of ingredients.

What makes them even better is in these meals I control how much salt or anything else ends up in my food. I still get the convenience, at the cost of a busy weekend, and better food quality to boot.

I work at a bakery, and we used to sell that last castle cake. The manufacturer actually discontinued it in the past few weeks, and we don't have a real replacement for it. (It's less plastic than you imagine, especially if you have a good designer who adds his/her own flowers or shrubs, as ours did). I'm less surprised by this kit's (former) existance than by the parent(s)' willingness to pay $95 and up on a cake for it.

Step 4: Please remember to remove part d. note: some purple frosting (occasionally all purple frosting) will peal or fall as a result of removing part d. This is normal. I you wish to keep frosting on during consumption please leave part d on though only if there are no children under 5 present.

Disclaimer: Cake only contains frosting on those parts visible. Price tag is impossible to remove. We suggest a purple sharpie. All purchases non-refundable. Sorry.

The backstory on the castle cake confirms what I was getting at earlier -- there is nothing to do with the plastic bits afterward except decorate another cake. I hope the cake in the picture wasn't frosted with Crisco. Who wouldn't want their child to be a literal lard-[donkey], eh?

Cinderella should be riding a dinosaur, though -- they missed that important detail.

At the grocery store where I work, we got a new head of bakery in corporate who insisted that we had TOO MUCH INVENTORY. We needed to offload some NOW! (She's not entirely the brightest bulb in the box, seeing as you do need some inventory to be able to decorate ...but I digress.) So we said, "Fine", through plastered on smiles and proceeded to pump our cakes with so much plastic we were fairly throwing it on by the handfuls. The cakes and cupcakes looked ridiculous on purpose as a sort of "take that" to our manager, and we did get the inventory down to a "manageable" level and she we happy, so, I guess, mission accomplished? Saddest part is that she whole-heartedly approved of our plastic monstrosities. She called them "fun".

Why did you change from the cute picture of the Mohawk Babies riding carrots to the photo of the plastic Mohawk baby dolls? The picture was cute, but the photo is a disappointment! I recently told some friends about your website and the header picture at cakewrecks.com. They are parents of a baby boy who is the spitting image of the cute picture babies, so I thought they would enjoy it. However, is was a shock to see the not-so-cute plastic knockoff instead. Can you change your header back to the cute picture babies? Thanks -- and especially for the hours of hilarity that our family has enjoyed on your website. Our preteen drags me, her dad, and any other willing family members to the computer at regular intervals to enjoy the show. --Annette Olsen, Houston, TX

The header on Cake Wrecks has been the same for over two years now. We do use a cartoon drawing of the baby for Twitter and Facebook but the plastic babies on icing carrots are the originals. I'm sorry you're not a big fan.

Here's the sad thing: My daughter had the big princess cake one year and the strawberry shortcake one the next. It's not my fault, her gramdma spoils her atrociously. Now I get to show grandma how TWO cakes that she has bought the child ended up on the same Cake Wrecks post... maybe it'll get through to her...

Maybe I'm wrong, but are you sure the Teletubbies, Disney, Thomas, etc cake is plastic? It almost looks like fondant or marzipan or some other shaped something-or-other. Mostly because they all look like cheap knock-offs, but in the same style. It's still too much going on for one cake, but at least that would be more impressive than slapping a bunch of toys on the top.

I absolutely hate that Princess Castle cake. I am pretty sure that I can now decorate it with me eyes shut at this point. But it gets worse.There is a Spongebob Luau cake, a Nascar cake, Spiderman...and many many more. Not at all cool at all and impossible to make them look even halfway decent when you have to make twenty five billion cakes in an eight hour shift.

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